Making Tens: The Single Most Powerful Mental Math Strategy for Early Learners

There is a moment that happens in the development of almost every mathematically confident child, usually somewhere between kindergarten and second grade, when they stop counting and start calculating. The shift is subtle from the outside. From the inside, it is a fundamental change in how numbers feel: less like objects to be counted one by one and more like quantities that have relationships, that can be rearranged, that can be made to cooperate with each other.

Making tens is, more than any other single strategy, what produces that shift.

It is not the only strategy that matters in early mathematics. But it is the one that mathematics educators and cognitive scientists return to again and again when asked what foundational skills predict later mathematical success. It is the strategy that makes addition and subtraction within twenty fast and reliable. It is the conceptual foundation for understanding place value. It is the gateway to mental calculation with larger numbers. And it is something every child can learn, in any home, with almost no materials, given the right kind of attention and practice.

What Making Tens Actually Is

Making tens is a mental strategy based on a simple and powerful insight: ten is the center of our number system. Everything in our base ten number system is organized around groups of ten. Once a child truly understands ten, as a quantity, as a target, as a structural feature of all larger numbers, they have a navigational anchor that makes the entire number system more legible.

The strategy itself works like this. When adding two numbers that together exceed ten, instead of counting up from one number to the other, a child who makes tens first builds up to ten using part of the second number, and then adds what remains.

The classic example: eight plus six.

A child who counts all starts at one and counts to fourteen. A child who counts on starts at eight and counts six more. Both arrive at the right answer. Neither has done anything efficient or generalizable.

A child who makes tens thinks: eight needs two more to reach ten. I can take two from six, leaving four. Eight plus two is ten, and ten plus four is fourteen.

The answer is the same. But what happened on the way to the answer is completely different. The making tens child has not just calculated. They have reasoned about the structure of the numbers. They have decomposed a number, which is itself a fundamental mathematical skill. They have used ten as an anchor, building the foundation for every subsequent encounter with place value. And they have arrived at the answer in a way that generalizes: the same thinking applies to eighteen plus six, or eighty plus sixty, or eight hundred plus six hundred.

Why Ten Is the Right Anchor

Our number system is base ten, meaning it is organized in groups of ten. Every time we reach ten of something, we bundle it and move it to the next place. Ten ones become one ten. Ten tens become one hundred. This structure pervades everything: the way we write numbers, the way we add and subtract, the way we multiply and divide, the way we handle decimals and percentages.

A child who truly understands ten, who has a visceral feel for how far eight is from ten, how much more six needs to reach twenty, what happens when you go past a ten boundary, has access to the structural logic of the whole number system in a way that a child who only counts does not.

Making tens is the first place most children encounter and internalize this structural logic. It is why mathematics educators consider it so foundational. It is not just one strategy among many. It is the strategy that opens the door to the way our number system actually works.

The Five Steps of Building This Strategy

Making tens is not absorbed through explanation alone. It is built through a specific progression of experiences, from concrete to pictorial to abstract, and shortcuts in this progression tend to produce surface level performance that does not generalize or last.

Step one: physical experience with quantities up to ten.

Before any strategy can be built, a child needs a genuine feel for the quantities involved. How many is eight? What does it look like? How many more does it need to reach ten? These questions should be answered with physical objects, with fingers, with counters, with collections of small things that can be moved and grouped. The goal at this stage is not speed. It is the development of a genuine sense of quantity that will underlie the abstract calculation later.

Step two: ten frames.

A ten frame is a rectangle divided into ten equal cells, arranged in two rows of five. It is one of the most useful tools in early mathematics education, because it makes the relationship between a quantity and ten visually immediate. Placing eight counters in a ten frame makes it instantly visible that two cells are empty, that eight is two away from ten. This visual experience is the bridge between handling physical objects and thinking abstractly about numerical relationships.

Working with ten frames, either physical ones with counters or drawn representations, builds the mental image of ten that making tens requires. A child who has spent time with ten frames develops a visual anchor for the relationships they will later calculate mentally.

Step three: number bonds for ten.

Number bonds are a representation of the ways a number can be split into two parts. The number bonds for ten are: ten and zero, nine and one, eight and two, seven and three, six and four, five and five. These are the facts that making tens is built on, and they need to be known automatically.

Not memorized as isolated facts to be retrieved. Known as relationships that are so familiar they feel obvious. The difference matters. A child who has experienced these relationships concretely and pictorially, who has physically split ten objects into different groups many times, arrives at automatic knowledge through understanding. That knowledge is stable and flexible. Rote memorization of the same facts produces something more brittle.

Step four: applying the strategy with two digit additions crossing ten.

Once the bonds to ten are solid, the making tens strategy can be applied to additions that cross the ten boundary: eight plus five, seven plus six, nine plus four, and so on. At this stage, encourage the child to narrate their thinking. "Eight needs two more to make ten. I take two from five, which leaves three. Eight plus two is ten, ten plus three is thirteen."

This narration is not just communication. It is consolidation. The act of putting the strategy into words forces the child to organize and sequence their thinking in a way that deepens the understanding.

Step five: extending to larger numbers.

Once the strategy is reliable with single digits, extend it explicitly to larger contexts. Eighteen plus six uses exactly the same logic as eight plus six. Forty seven plus five uses the same logic applied to the next ten boundary. Making this connection explicit, showing a child that the strategy they already know applies to new situations, is one of the most powerful instructional moves available.

How to Build This at Home Without Special Materials

You do not need worksheets, apps, or curriculum materials to build the making tens strategy. Some of the most effective practice happens in the natural flow of a day.

Counting objects into ten. Any time you have a collection of small objects, count them into groups of ten together. Ask: how many in this group? How many more to reach the next ten? These questions, asked casually and repeatedly, build the ten anchor through experience.

Ten frames with everyday objects. Draw a simple two by five grid on a piece of paper or use an egg carton. Place objects in it and ask: how many are in? How many empty spaces? How many more do we need? Egg cartons work particularly well because they are already organized in rows and already present in most kitchens.

"How far from ten?" as a daily game. When you see a number in daily life, on a price tag, on a page number, on a clock, ask: how far is that from ten? Or from the next ten? These casual questions, sustained over weeks and months, build numerical fluency through conversation.

Narrated mental math. When you do mental arithmetic in front of your child, narrate your thinking using the making tens approach. "I need to add eight and seven. Eight needs two more to make ten, so I take two from the seven, which leaves five. Ten plus five is fifteen." Children who hear fluent mathematical thinking narrated regularly begin to internalize the strategies they hear.

How This Strategy Connects to Everything That Comes After

Making tens does not stop being relevant when a child moves past single digit addition. It is the explicit foundation of:

Place value understanding. The understanding that ten ones compose one ten, that ten tens compose one hundred, is a direct extension of the making tens insight. Children who have genuinely internalized making tens find place value considerably more intuitive than children who have not.

Subtraction strategies. Counting back to the previous ten, a core mental subtraction strategy, is the mirror image of making tens for addition. The same ten anchor, used in reverse.

Addition and subtraction with two and three digit numbers. Breaking a number apart to bridge through tens is the mental strategy most fluent adult calculators use for mental arithmetic with larger numbers. It begins here.

Multiplication. Understanding multiplication as groups of tens and ones builds directly on the making tens foundation. Five times twelve is much more accessible to a child who already thinks naturally in terms of tens.

Decimal and percentage reasoning. The entire logic of decimals and percentages is organized around ten and one hundred. Children with a deep ten sense navigate this territory with far more intuition than those without.

One strategy. Built early. Applied with genuine understanding. The return on that investment continues for the entire mathematical education that follows.